Twirl down Twenty Deep, and change Copies to 20 but leave Offset at 0. Press Return to rename it, calling this one “Twenty Deep.” You can imagine what’s coming up. Twirl up all of Five Long, then go to Add>Repeater again. Now that you see how easy it is to make extra shapes, we’ll use a similar technique to add hundreds more.
Now twirl down Transform: Five Long, and change the Position value to 200,0 to add more space between the duplicates. Twirl down its options and change Copies to 5 and Offset to –2. Press Return to rename it and call it “Five Long,” as we’ll be adding another Repeater later, and this makes it much easier to identify. Twirl up the Stroke, and select the Repeater. How do we get more-lots more? Making sure either Stroke 1 or Group 1 is still selected, go to Add>Repeater. (Just as an aside here: The stroke was created above the fill, which means it can also be dragged down below the fill.) So, we have our first (and only master) shape. Good so far.įor good measure, go to Add>Stroke, twirl down Stroke 1, and set the Color to black, the Stroke Width to 6 pt, and the Line Join to Round Join. Using the Selection tool (V), you can drag the gradient points around inside the shape to define the direction and length of the gradient fill. Make the color changes you desire, then click OK. Go back to Add, choose Gradient Fill, then click the gradient swatch next to Fill in the Toolbox to access the Gradient Editor. A new shape appears in the Group and you’ll also see a star path in the Comp window-but no color. STEP 2 Add Path Fill with Gradient Edit Gradient Go to the Add menu under the Switches column, and choose Group (empty). Twirl down the Shape Layer 1 that appears in the Timeline, then twirl down Contents-it should be empty. You can use the shape tools in the Toolbox but I find it better to create them using the menus because it’s easier to organize all the “extras” we’ll need. Let’s start out by taking a look at how to successfully build shape layers. The specs for this project are a square-pixel composition of 800×450 pixels (16:9 aspect but intended for Flash video), 29.97 frames per second, 5 seconds long, with a background color of white, and named “Army Comp”. This is something the manuals won’t show you. Is it useful? Absolutely! But dig under the hood and, using some very interesting techniques, a whole army of moving, synchronized shapes can be created from something that seemed so harmless to begin with. From the large selection of new features that Adobe has infused into After Effects CS3, shape layers are (in my humble opinion) the black sheep of the family – a feature seemingly taken from Photoshop to keep it in the family? Perhaps.
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